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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.694
EAN num: 9780345476395
ISBN number: 0345476395
Label: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: January 09, 2007
Publishing house: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Release Date: January 09, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 6822
Studio: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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“Part treatise, part miscellany, unfailingly entertaining.”
–The New York Times
“A small pearl of a book . . . a great tale of the growth of a modern city as seen through the rise and fall of the lowly oyster.”
–Rocky Mountain News
Award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants–the oyster.
For centuries New York was famous for this particular shellfish, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city’s life that the abundant bivalves were Gotham’s most celebrated export, a staple food for all classes, and a natural filtration system for the city’s congested waterways.
Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight–along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photos–this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the seventeenth-century founding of New York to the death of its oyster beds and the rise of America’s environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble Five Points slums to Manhattan’s Gilded Age dining chambers. With The Big Oyster, Mark Kurlansky serves up history at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious.
“Suffused with [Kurlansky’s] pleasure in exploring the city across ground that hasn’t already been covered with other writers’ footprints.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Fascinating stuff . . . [Kurlansky] has a keen eye for odd facts and natural detail.”
–The Wall Street Journal
“Kurlansky packs his breezy book with terrific anecdotes.”
–Entertainment Weekly
“Magnificent . . . a towering accomplishment.”
–Associated Press
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
I really enjoyed reading this book. I drove my co-workers crazy with numerous quotes from the book. As a New Jersey native (you know the wetern suburb of NYC) I really found the history amazing, we did not learn these things in school.
I remember many many many years ago wandering in various parts of the neighborhood and digging/unearthing oyster shells... Collecting the unbroken smashed up ones and bringing my bounty home. Always wondering how sea shells, got there? Well, perhaps now, finally, after 50 years I have an idea.
What I found most delightful about this writer, is his way to meander, at just the right pace; so as not to bore me, loose me, but guide me from one step to the other without a stark transition and a feeling of disruption in the calm, relaxation this book provided.
Rated by buyers -
This is an eye-opening book about the bounty that surrounded New York in the early years of the city, amazing for those of us who grew up locally in the pollution and grime of the late 20th century. For oyster lovers, the story is even more heartbreaking, as oysters used to be available for 10 cents each as opposed to being flown in from far-off lands for many times that. But, it is fun to consider all those oysters and the recipes contained in the book. I think I'll stop by the Oyster Bar the subsequent time I'm in town!
Rated by buyers 
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I'll grant that Mark Kurlansky did his homework.He provides an extensive Bibliography and the narrative is filled with many, many, many facts. That's exactly the problem. The book is overflowing with details. For the very first time in many years I felt I was reading a history assignment - hence the title of this Review.
I did glean many interesting facts, both big and small. Trouble is, the facts just keep coming. As other reviewers have indicated there are numerous recipes in the book but I would venture to say that most of them are for food historians, not chefs. One brief example is the following recipe: "To Roast a Leg of Lamb with Oysters. Take a Leg about two or three Days kill'd. Stuff it all over with Oysters and roast it. Garnish it with horse-raddish." Yup! That's the whole, succinct recipe.
I'll admit that the number old prints reproduced in this book are interesting. But unless you are of the scholarly type I'd save this book for a night when you have insomnia.
Rated by buyers 
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History, History, History. And we continue to live it. Know our past control our future.
Rated by buyers 
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At very first it seems curious that Mark Kurlansky would want to write a history of a city and its residents whom he so thoroughly dislikes. Then it becomes clear that the protagonists are the oysters, not the city or the people, and those oysters would still be doing just fine if it weren't for the depredations of civilization. Eventually you get caught up in the saga, but it's a little thin, so the author adds copious amounts of non-oyster New York City history. This part will seem somewhat duplicative of "The Island at the Center of the World," but it's almost as interesting the second time around. Then, just as you start taking him seriously as a historian, Kurlansky starts making the kind of egregious factual errors that throw his scholarship into question. On page 15, for instance he states that humans evolved 65 million years ago. Wow! The earliest hominid fossils date to about 2 million years ago. His disregard for science continues when he erroneously asserts that recapitulation is a "well established principal (sic) of evolutionary science." Actually it's a captivating, but long-debunked theory. Errors like these make us much less receptive to the hundreds of casual facts strewn throughout the book.
Here's a sincere tip for the prospective reader attracted to the book's subtitle, "History on the Half Shell." The entire story of the history of the oyster in New York City is contained in chapters 6 and 8. Of course if you want to read all about the gangs of New York, or the biography of Diamond Jim Brady, by all means, read the entire book. But the problem with reading the entire book is the turgid march of one colorless sentence after another. Any single page of Henry Thoreau contains more entertaining prose than Kurlansky's entire book.
Kurlansky repeatedly refers to New Yorkers' gluttony: "The two most common gastronomic observations made about nineteenth century New York were that the oysters were cheap and that the people ate enormous quantities not only of oysters, but of everything." That is Kurlansky's typical characterization of a New Yorker. Yet not one of the old photographs or pen and ink drawings illustrating the book depict a single obese person.
Overall, this is one of those badly written books about an interesting topic. If distilled to its essence, it might have made a good article in the Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker. It will not make you thirst for Kurlansky's other books, "Salt," and "Cod."
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